Coldflash and Legends One-Shots

When in Doubt, Say it with Flowers (Rated PG13)

Summary:

In the middle of robbing a flower shop, Len gets confronted by a naive customer looking for a subtle way to break up with his rich boyfriend...and Len spots an opportunity.

(Inspired by the post http://justnightwingit.tumblr.com/post/145913005019/flower-shop-au.)

***

"Mick! This is taking too long!" Len hisses, impatiently scoping foot traffic, keeping an eye out for anything suspicious. "Where are they?"

"I'm lookin', I'm lookin'..." Mick grumbles, searching the floor beneath his scarred palms for a loose tile, a phony board, anything that could conceal a secret stash.

"You've been looking for twenty-five minutes! What's the hold up?"

"It ain't where it's supposed to be."

"You said your intel was reliable," Len growls, rolling his eyes after he hears his partner ram his head into a corner.

"It is good," Mick groans.

"If we take too much longer sniffin' around, someone might get suspicious."

"No one's comin' in here. We put a sign up on the door."

"Like anyone reads signs anymore," Len gripes. He eyes the sign in question – CLOSED FOR FAMILY BUSINESS - taped to the glass in a way that obscures his face peeking out behind the door frame. The cashier who opened the shop this morning, Penny Pingleton, is knocked out cold and tied up in the utility closet. By Len's calculations, she should stay unconscious for at least another hour. As per Mick's reliable intel, she's the only employee scheduled until five, which is when the shop closes - approximately three hours from now. The man who actually owns the shop, Brett Hastings, is on vacation in Palm Beach.

That's where Len's beginning to suspect their payday has gone.

"By the way," Len starts, posing a question he realizes too late he should have asked before, "why is someone gonna store half a mill in blood diamonds in a flower shop?"

"Well, you don't believe they're here," Mick replies, moving his search past the beige floral-and-paisley curtain that divides the shop from the work space in back. "Who else is gonna?"

Len raises a brow and nods his head sideways. "Good point."

While Mick putters amidst buckets of decorative greenery and baby's breath, Len mentally divides the people walking by the florist's shop as potential threats and non-threats. Realistically, anyone can be a threat if they get in Len and Mick's way, but the more immediate threats Len keeps closer tabs on.

And there's one now.

A beat cop, his hand on the butt of his sidearm, talking into a radio. But he races by without even a glance at the shop.

Not a threat...for now. But in the area.

An older woman with curly white hair, walking some breed of unnaturally miniature dog, also with curly white hair. They're both wearing matching red plaid coats.

Obnoxious, but not a threat.

A harried-looking mother pushing an infant in a stroller and towing her four-year-old(ish) daughter by one arm. The mother seems to be having an animated discussion over a cell phone wedged between her shoulder and her ear. The little girl is eating a soft pretzel. The girl looks his way, but Len doesn't think she sees him. No expression of discovery blooms on her face the way it does on most kids when they see something they don't think anyone else does.

Not a threat.

Another cop, this one a plain clothes officer. Len can make him off the bat by the way he walks, the way he constantly scans the area, the way he periodically presses on his right ear, his eyes flicking towards the roof of a nearby building. He's probably wearing an ear piece. The CCPD must be searching for someone.